jumps out of the car before me. By the time I scoot out of the seat, he’s already inside the building. I watch through the glass as he walks at a clipped pace to the elevator and slaps the button.
“Thank you, Murphy.”
He nods, and his warm grin feels like an apology.
I have to wait for the elevator as Alexander took it up ahead of me. With each second that passes, I feel my own irritation take root and sprout. When the carriage finally arrives, I’m fuming mad. What a child! If he has something to say, why doesn’t he just say it? He’s the one who said what we have is temporary. I’m over here doing everything in my power not to fall in love with him while he continues to push me away, and he can’t even be happy for me when I get an opportunity to make something of my life?
I storm off the elevator and into the penthouse, prepared to tell him exactly how I feel, but he’s nowhere to be found. Not in the bedroom, living room, kitchen.
I toss my purse on the bed and pull bobby pins from my hair while practicing my speech in my head. The second he gets back here from wherever he is, it is so on. Where could he possibly have gone? The last time he disappeared on me, he told me he was at the gym.
I stomp out of the penthouse, past the elevator, to the door on the opposite side. I punch in the code, hoping it’s the same as the code for his front door. Thankfully, it unlocks. When I walk in, I hear his guttural grunts in unison with knuckles smacking a punching bag.
Just like the rest of the building, everything is white and glass, and when I turn the corner, I see Alexander stripped down to nothing but his tuxedo pants, with his shirt, tie, jacket, shoes, and socks in a pile along the wall. His body seems bigger somehow, swollen and sweat-soaked as he throws his fists against the heavy bag.
He catches sight of me, his face contorted with an animalistic rage. “Get out!”
My heart jumps and stutters as adrenaline floods my veins.
He lunges toward me, but it’s as if his spine locks and refuses to let him take another step closer. “Get the fuck out! Now!”
“No.” The one syllable is like a pin drop in a room blasting heavy metal, and yet he hears it loud and clear.
He tilts his head and prowls closer. His heavy shoulders roll with each step, his fisted hands causing the veins in his forearms to protrude. His pants hang low on his hips, and every single muscle in his body is taut. “Leave. I won’t ask you again.”
His pupils are dilated, eating up all the hazel and leaving only a soulless black. I search for some semblance of Alexander, some whisper that my Grizzly is still in there. Only his hate-filled stare shines back.
Everything inside me screams to run in the opposite direction, but my feet carry me closer.
“Don’t test me!” His nostrils flare, and his breath saws in and out of his lungs.
I reach out to cup his jaw, and he smacks my arm out of the way.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he growls.
“Is this why you came here the night after dinner with your family? You thought you’d hurt me?”
“I really need you to go,” he says through clenched teeth.
“I don’t believe you’d hurt me—”
“You’re so stupid,” he says, and an evil smirk tilts his lips.
Tears sting my eyes. “You’re trying to push me away.”
He chuckles, and the sound is like rotten milk curdling in my soul. He goes back to his punching bag and slams his fists against it. My body jumps with each brutal hit, my muscles wound so tightly that every smack of the bag feels like an electric zap. He hits the bag so hard that the skin on his knuckles breaks. Blood streaks the bag, but it’s not enough to stop him. He brutalizes his own flesh, and every splatter seems to spur him on. He’s hurting himself.
Hurting himself instead of me.
What happened to you?
Even though I don’t voice the question, he seems to hear it. He grabs the bloodied bag as if it’s a life ring. His shoulders rise and fall with heaving breath. He rests his forehead on the red-streaked vinyl.
Slowly, he rolls his head to look at me. His eyes are still black but seem exhausted.